This is not sustainable

It seems impossible to overstate how much chaos ICE and Border Patrol agents are unleashing in Minneapolis. Under the direction of Border Patrol head Greg Bovino, on the apparent orders of Stephen Miller and a cadre of other White House fascists, federal agents are attacking Americans on the streets.

Over and over and over again.

Did you think America was supposed to look like that? Did you think that would ever become the new normal, and that your Republican neighbors would squeal in happiness to see it?

The best description I have run across: riot. ICE and Border Patrol agents are rioting in the streets, smashing property and attacking bystanders for the alleged crime of existing in public.

The legal fallout has barely begun. At least six federal prosecutors have resigned rather than follow administration orders to launch a criminal investigation of murdered Renee Good's widow. A federal court is expected to rule by Thursday on an emergency injunction prohibiting these forces from arresting Americans who committed no crimes—Thursday may be too late.

This is not sustainable. Something is going to break, and even if everybody knows that stoking that something is precisely what Bovino, Miller, and Trump are trying to do, that doesn't mean that the something can be prevented. Americans are enraged, and they should be. Americans see themselves, in this unending chain of videos that show roided-out street thugs leaping out of cars demanding that teens prove their identity, that delivery drivers prove their identity, that random Americans just trying to go from one place to another prove their identity—and they should. Americans see car windows being smashed in for the supposed crime of being in a place where secret police can see you—as they should.

This is not sustainable, it is all going to go south very fucking fast, and everybody involved with trying to make it all cascade into wider violence needs to be held accountable sooner rather than later.

Republican lawmakers, we have to point out yet again, could stop all of this anytime they wanted to. It would be trivial. It would require nothing more than a raised hand and a vote. Republicans could agree that no, Americans are not obliged to tolerate being tackled by groups of armed thugs and imprisoned if they cannot immediately prove that they are citizens—even as the thugs mock them and claim the papers they produce are supposedly "faked." Americans are not obliged to tolerate mass street violence just because a group of flaccid-brained malevolents think it would be funny; Americans should not have to hide in their homes from roving gangs assaulting anyone with a skin tone darker than a January snowdrift.

Republicans could stop this an hour from now, or six hours from now, or anytime they wanted, if they wanted to put their loyalty to America above their fealty to a dementia-addled seditionist and his collection of Nazi-worshipping propagandists.

This is not sustainable, and more Americans are going to get shot in the streets because Republicans are seditionist-backing, cowardly little fucks who will take no action to rein in obvious crimes by their own allies.

I have been agonizingly circumspect about all of this, I have held my tongue so many times about so many things, for fear of being labeled an accelerationist myself. But this is not sustainable, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine any near-future scenario that does not involve Americans pitted in mass violence against each other, all for the sake of determining whether we still have the rights we thought we had one year ago or whether we are in a new order in which the most willfully corrupt among us can strip every right, and every life, by asserting some new nonsensical hoax that supposedly invalidates the old laws and blossoms new violent powers.

We can say all we like: This is not what America is supposed to be. But if no movement rises up to oppose this, then it will be a cheap lie, a fairy tale told to children. Anyone in power who does not rise up against this is a traitor to the people; any who do not take concrete steps to oppose it should be considered unfit for public office of any kind, no matter how small the job or how long they live.

Gov. Tim Walz would do well to contemplate what more can be done to intervene in these attacks. It may mean calling up the National Guard. It may mean making showy arrests of Bovino's core team, now becoming notorious for shooting protesters in the face with supposed "non-lethal" rounds and for making thuggish threats to anyone who dares to disrespect them. This is not sustainable, and many more people are going to die in the streets if these unhinged, likely drugged-up paramilitary little shits are not hauled off to account for their crimes.